3.30.2009

The White House has given Chrysler 30 days to work out a deal with Fiat, the Italian automaker with plenty of quality- and management-skeletons of its own. On the surface I like the sound of a Chrysler/Fiat merger, a Fiat buyout, or whatever it might be called. Italians are more than merely "the well-dressed Mexicans" an old, dead business acquaintance of mine liked to call them, and Ferrari and Ferragamo are proof that the boys in the boot can build great cars and brands. Chrysler's modern arsenal of big, bad, quintessentially American cars and trucks were the talk of the town three years ago, but the Daimler/Chrysler alliance subjugated the ascendant American marque in a gulag of Teutonic management and marketing.

Although the Fiat brand has never prospered in the land of milk and honey, it makes some pretty cool cars for European drivers. Imagine a cross between these two:

The 2009 Fiat 500

The 2009 Chrysler 300

I can imagine it perfectly, and it would look something like this:

The 2005 Dodge Neon

Frysler 400, anyone?

Perhaps merging an Italian econoboxer and a sinking American behemoth isn't such a good idea after all.